PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production Using Pitch Correction Plugins

Yeah ..... I was recently rebuffed for suggesting.....(redacted a fair amount of what I was going to say).....

That said, yes absolutely. Everyone should have it and use it. it's a rare singer today who doesn't need a touchup here and there and rather than recording it again on an otherwise good take, a tweek in melodyne is quick and easy.

I use it on every single vocal that goes through my studio. I've used it to fix instrument tracks as well.

I have to agree with what MusicVillain says here. Macros alone will never do the job. It needs some additional manual treatment and help for the program to properly understand what was intended. But then the results sound very natural.

It is also obvious, that well sung vocals are the best choice. The less treatment necessary, the better. Unfortunately often enough that's not the case. Good vocals require a lot of training. You just can't do a marathon if you are not fit. I often discover that with my own voice. I can hear that something is wrong, but I can't control it. The vocals are just unstable and shaky. And the older I get, the worse it gets.

My spare time is limited and I have to decide whether to spend it on vocal training, on my instruments or on production. Whatever opportunity there is, I try to find the best balance.

Here's a great use for melodyne.

Yes we all know that it can fix a pitchy vocal but ultimately, isn't the goal to track a better vocal from the start? Of course it is.

Melodyne can help you achieve that goal. Once you've sung the track and loaded melodyne it displays the vocals in what are called blobs on a grid. Not only does it show you the flat and sharp and off time stuff but there's actually a lot more information on your vocal techniques in the blobs if you know what to look for.

Just one example. On a held note, usually at the end of the vocal phrase.... Does the blobs remain consistent in shape all the way to the end of the note or does it change shape at some point before the note ends? Often, a singer, including myself, will tend to pull back or "swallow" the note. We don't pay attention to what this actually sounds like but it's not the Hallmark of a good singer.
A quick glance at melodyne's blobs and you can see all the swallowed notes. Using the punch features, go back and rework the note and sing it with power and see the difference in the blob and the sound of the note. It's where we move from chest voice to throat voice in the middle of the note without realizing that we're doing it.

This is but one thing you can do to actually improve your initial singing on the front end of the process. Vibrato and volume fading notes are two more things you can see and work on to get better on the tracking of vocals.

In essence, melodyne is a vocal coach.

I never thought of autotune as a diagnostic aid, but what you describe could be supremely helpful to a singer, even a no-autotune purist.

All.

please dont 'yap' at me , but heres some ideas ive developed over the years not only recording my vocs..but others vocs….and singing in everything from church choirs thru' rock/metal groups n' various other genres.
(i enjoy doing different vocs in different styles n' different personas etc etc. whether i'm any good i'll let others judge my songs..lol.)

1..dont be too hard on yourself. REMEMBER even the best vocallists have 'bad days'.
2..if you tell yourself your a bad vocalist you will be,
JUST GO AT IT AND ENJOY IT AND HAVE CONFIDENCE.
3..listen to old classic hits lots of 'booboos'. didnt stop em' being hits.
4..when developing songs in biab/rb FIND YOUR BEST VOC KEY FOR THE SONG.
ie if you find one key isnt working transpose the chord sheet n' try another.
5..try different vocal 'characters' n' personas. eg maybe a straight voc doesnt work but maybe another character vocal does. maybe a high voc dont work but maybe a low one will or vice versa.
for example (n' it cheeses me off daily") i used to be a v high male soprano in church..but as i age …i'm loosing upper registers…so i am forced to adapt.
6..practice breathing excercises. (see net for more info.)
7..ok so you have great lyrics…when singing em' to get control dont record the whole shebang at one take if you have probs..try maybe a phrase or two. maybe a few takes of each n' comp from the best takes. yes i know its laborious but it can often work.
8..one of the best ideas i can suggest is the following…do practice warm ups.
human nature being it is even some of the best vocallists get nervous in a big studio that cost millions and they are put in front of an expensive mic.
i remember my first time in such…at home on my own rig i could do the voc…but in the big studio i became a 'nervous nellie'...and fell apart...till i did a couple of takes with a cuppa tea…lol.
9..ALWAYS do a guide first voc if your nervous.
what ive often found is (and its due often to fear of failure n'other psychology) one is often nervous on a first take. when i recorded others on a first take i would just say 'this is a practice voc take for levels/set up etc.'...BUT often that first take was the best cos the person went 'phew i can relax its just a guide trak'.
10..psychologically.. having a guide voc first take down n' hearing back ive found one sings better on second n' subsequent takes. COS YOU HAVE A BASE REFERENCE.
(its the same if i play gtr…normally the second n' subsequent takes are better, dunno why.
i put it down to human psychology).
11..i dont personally use 'tuning software'...cos i think the fact that its available makes one not strive as much. so i would respectfully suggest to only use it once everything else has been tried. (ie dont become over reliant on it.)
12..maybe read up on the net various tips from vocal coaches n' others.ABOVE ALL REMEMBER TO ENJOY THE SONG CREATION PROCESS n' as DR G says have fun. thats why i do songs.

happiness to all with your vocals.
hth/ymmv etc etc.

om

This exactly! I am still trying to wrap my brain around how Melodyne works but first and foremost would be a performance that had feeling . . . Then I'll see what I can do if something is a tad off.

~Russell~

I don't, I use it manually. You assume too much.

Not everyone who posts here on the forum is a professional singer.

So, what would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?

If it becomes a requirement to sing on pitch and only to produce professional-sounding vocals to be welcome on the User Showcase, then about 99% of us need to go home!

There are some excellent vocalists here on the site. We all know who they are. Can any of them sing as well as Willie Nelson or Whitney Houston? How many of us have a five-octave range?

The idea that we somehow need to control the level of quality of everyone who comes here is at best distasteful.

Now, Melodyne is an excellent software that requires a substantial learning curve. The same goes for Autotune Pro. They can not fix everything. They are useful for good vocalists and less useful for a very poor vocalist. In some ways, it is like computer software...GIGO

For someone who uses BIAB, it seems ludicrous to call using any software "cheating."

I was not aware this was a test.

Billy

I hope sharing information about how to improve a vocal production ... if that's what someone wants to do ... isn't construed as disinviting or discouraging anyone.

Certainly not why I'm following this thread.

DFT

Both good singers and poor singers should be welcome to the User Showcase forum.

How about an implementation of like button bumping algorithm?

Like how Instagram works, if a singer is on tune and the music is produced in high quality, her song will be bumped up based on the number of likes she received.

If a singer is out of tune, he can still post, he just doesn't get many likes, so his song is not showing on first page of the forum.

User Showcase forum should be promoting, not hurting PG Music sales.

Imagine if a new customer is interested in buying the software, and visits the showcase forum to check things out. After listening to a few songs bumped on the top and only finds those songs out of tune, is he still going to make a purchase?

My thought is someone looking to purchase Band-in-a-Box will hopefully understand Band-in-a-Box provides the instrumental elements of a song while the User Showcase song poster provided, or had someone provide, a lead vocal.

In the same manner, what if the User Showcase song is an instrumental and all the instruments sound professional except for the lean piano it's pretty easy to guess which part the song poster provided.

Finally, potential customers can find demo songs throughout the sales information.

I started reading this thread not knowing it was focused on vocals. I can't help there, but I do have Melodyne Studio and I do use it very occasionally.

You know I play wind instruments, and they haven't yet built one that is fully in tune with itself, no matter who plays it. Further, each one of my trumpets has its own nuances and I have to compensate depending on which horn I have. If I really miss on an otherwise good take, I may employ a little help.

I listen for the songs, for the ideas, for the use of BIAB, for the improvement, for the communication and for fun.
Man, you're full of suggestions, criticisms and comments but get a grip on life, the universe & the User Showcase Forum.
Some folk get a heap of listens and comments because they always present high quality productions of high quality songs.
Some folk get a heap of listens and comments because they present high quality songs.
Some folk get a heap of listens and comments because they leave generous/kind/helpful or supportive comments for other folk.
Some folk get some listens and some comments because that's how the folk on the forum feel at that stage/age/day/hour etc.
The forum showcases how some people with limited access to musical instruments, perhaps with limited access to money, with limited mixing/editing/tracking skills can create a song with BIAB. As such it's a BRILLIANT promotional tool to & for people who want to make songs. If something is out of tune it's likely the vocalist BUT BIAB doesn't make the vocals so pitchy vox aren't a slap at the program. Your perspectives are very interesting but in a place where most folk make music because they love to, because they simply MUST, because they want to get a message across or for what ever reason your perspective seem to be lifting the bar in a way that prevents folk doing what they want to do. Most hits songs from the 1940s to the 2000s aren't pitch perfect, aren't perfect. If you're after bland perfection you're in the wrong place.

Have any of y'all ever not enjoyed a song just because it didn't exhibit inhuman levels of perfection in timing and pitch that can only be generated artificially?

Ray,

I have been running a 4-way factorial Anova test of variance in a controlled longitudinal study of posters on music forums for 20 years and have just released the results.

With our p values against the null hypothesis so low, we can now say with a degree of 99.99989989 certainty that people who post threads asking people to improve their forum music or else are usually writing the very worst crap that has has been written in the history of the world 99.9999999967698765 % of the time, and that the only solution is to ship them off to the North Pole where they can design another funny animated mask to wear and maybe sharpen their skills on the Shamisen.

Also, we have proved that the more time people spend not reading these "educational forums" the better their songs are by a factor of 10,000 percent, and they also seem to be writing more of them.

What is hindering our research though, Ray, are those who are talking but who have written or posted Zero songs, since zero is hard to factor into any equation of this sort.

What we don't know is if they were so terrified of writing after writing such preposterous boasts that they inflicted paralysis on themselves, or if they came to this thread because they already had the paralysis beforehand in conjunction with colitis and constipation.

That will require a higher level of Fourier analysis and we expect the project to be done in 5 years.

By that time, BIAB should have made enough adjustments to help everyone write at least one acceptable tune, since Peter Gannon has promised to make one house call per customer to show them how to generate a track.

I will keep you posted Ray, since I know you are a man of keen wit, and a shrewd intellect, who likes to stay ahead of the pigs, as we say here in the country.

Your Harvard friends here send you greetings from Cambridge. Our chess and brandy nights have been lonely without you.

Do pop over as soon as you can, and please bring that delightfully 60s punk sensibility of yours. It is all the rage here again, thank God.

Hi Peter, Andrew and other Forum Moderators.

I think it may be time to end this discussion.

I started it with what I thought were a couple of positive suggestions as to how we may improve the quality and in particular vocals in submitted songs.

But it has descended into acrimonious and argumentative comments - none of which relate to the theme of this thread.

Hoping you have a method of deleting this thread.

Thanks & Best Regards
Nigel

You blinded me with Science!
Would that Thomas Dolby was Thomas Dobly instead.
You thesis is worthy of Theseus & Theus.
Should we apply Mohs' or Calvin's Scale to this situation?
I've not considered applying those to myself as I'm more inclined to scratch & sniff.
I always fall back on the hardness axiom: a diamond in the rough is difficult to chip and harder to putt.

Perhaps if you click RESOLVED & orthe Notify Moderator buttons it will no longer attract activity.
Worth a try.

Nah.... This baby's just getting a good head of steam.

My thoughts: use the tools you need and/or can afford to make the best possible song that YOU like.
If that means autotuning vocals, guitars, and your kitten's "meow" to your liking, then do it.
If not, don't.
It's your song, and you have to like it first.